Backlog Studies eBook

I confess that this little picture of a fire on the
hearth so many centuries ago helps to make real and
interesting to me that somewhat misty past. No
doubt the lotus and the acanthus from the Nile grew
in that winter-house, and perhaps Jehoiakim attempted—­the
most difficult thing in the world the cultivation
of the wild flowers from Lebanon. Perhaps Jehoiakim
was interested also, as I am through this ancient
fireplace,—­which is a sort of domestic window
into the ancient world,—­in the loves of
Bernice and Abaces at the court of the Pharaohs.
I see that it is the same thing as the sentiment —­perhaps
it is the shrinking which every soul that is a soul
has, sooner or later, from isolation—­which
grew up between Herbert and the Young Lady Staying
With Us. Jeremiah used to come in to that fireside
very much as the Parson does to ours. The Parson,
to be sure, never prophesies, but he grumbles, and
is the chorus in the play that sings the everlasting
ai ai of “I told you so!” Yet we like
the Parson. He is the sprig of bitter herb that
makes the pottage wholesome. I should rather,
ten times over, dispense with the flatterers and the
smooth-sayers than the grumblers. But the grumblers
are of two sorts,—­the healthful-toned and
the whiners. There are makers of beer who substitute
for the clean bitter of the hops some deleterious
drug, and then seek to hide the fraud by some cloying
sweet. There is nothing of this sickish drug in
the Parson’s talk, nor was there in that of
Jeremiah, I sometimes think there is scarcely enough
of this wholesome tonic in modern society. The
Parson says he never would give a child sugar-coated
pills. Mandeville says he never would give them
any. After all, you cannot help liking Mandeville.

II

We were talking of this late news from Jerusalem.
The Fire-Tender was saying that it is astonishing
how much is telegraphed us from the East that is not
half so interesting. He was at a loss philosophically
to account for the fact that the world is so eager
to know the news of yesterday which is unimportant,
and so indifferent to that of the day before which
is of some moment.

Mandeville. I suspect that it arises from
the want of imagination. People need to touch
the facts, and nearness in time is contiguity.
It would excite no interest to bulletin the last siege
of Jerusalem in a village where the event was unknown,
if the date was appended; and yet the account of it
is incomparably more exciting than that of the siege
of Metz.

Ournextdoor. The daily news
is a necessity. I cannot get along without my
morning paper. The other morning I took it up,
and was absorbed in the telegraphic columns for an
hour nearly. I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling
of immediate contact with all the world of yesterday,
until I read among the minor items that Patrick Donahue,
of the city of New York, died of a sunstroke.
If he had frozen to death, I should have enjoyed that;
but to die of sunstroke in February seemed inappropriate,
and I turned to the date of the paper. When I
found it was printed in July, I need not say that I
lost all interest in it, though why the trivialities
and crimes and accidents, relating to people I never
knew, were not as good six months after date as twelve
hours, I cannot say.